Questions for Mr. Trelawny

I was recently informed that Mr. Trelawny is the staff member that deals with housing so if you wouldn't mind could you answer a few questions I am curious about?

1. How do you go around deciding what things are good candidates to become housing items?

2. Is there a chance we get no auction housing item drops in the future?

3. When creating a new house to put into the game, where do you start? How do you figure out how you want it to look? Do you do the inside or the outside first?

4. This isn't really a question, but more of a comment. Can we please see more statue housing items in the game? I see amazing looking statues as scenary in all the worlds and it makes me sad that we can't have them as housing items.

1. As each world and area is created and placed into game I usually will go around and pick out objects to request as housing items. Sometimes it's easy for one of our artists to go into the worlds and cut it out for me, other times it might take a little longer depending on the object.

2. There will be some more unique furniture coming up that will be no auction, but I would like to use this sparingly, part of the fun is going to the auction house and buying that matching vase or the rug that ties the whole room together.

3. (This answer comes from our Art Lead.)We start with a creative meeting to figure out an overall theme. Should the house be more Skull Island with waterfalls and swaying palm trees or more Aquilan with Roman architecture and brick pathways?

From there the house vision is sent to our team of amazing concept artists who turn words into works of art. They work with both the creative team and the 3D artists to make sure that the house hits the mark both in terms of overall theme as well as playability. Is the front door close enough to the dock? Are there interesting spaces for players to put furniture and set up "rooms"?

Once the concept is approved it's handed over to our environment art team. The first step is to gray-box the environment, following the concept and vision, so that we can run around in it and make sure it has that right feel to it. Cool vistas, hidden nooks, interesting rooms, they all start to take shape during this process. After the environment is gray-boxed and everyone is happy with the overall feeling then the artist will start adding the detail that will give it that final look. Geometry and texture detail, props, lighting, particles, etc. Typically the outside is built first and the interior second, but this isn't always the case.

(Mr Trelawny again ) Once all the artwork is done I attach all the parts in our design tool to turn it into a useable house. The artists do all the pretty work, I just use invisible nails.

4. There are quite a few statues out there, especially in Aquilla. Once the Aquila furniture is finished I am sure that you will be able to find one or two of them around.

He mentioned something about a Skull Island home which I never seen before and the closet I come is the Buccaneer Den. It does have a waterfall and some Palm Trees but he said Watersfall's so that must mean another Skull Island home and he did mention something about a Aquilan home so we're probably getting that to because you said we will be seeing more homes! :D

@Calamity Finch: Pillows can only be placed on floors and on tables, sadly beds and couches don't have the right "surface" for pillows. It’s a limitation of the system, but thank you for your feedback.

@Coolster: The Life Fountain was removed from the Crown Shop before launch at the direction of our Creative Director at the time.

@The Highlander Fox: I'm not sure that it was recently removed, but you are able to buy the Straw Hut from the Crown Shop for either 1,500 Crowns or 7,500 gold.